The Effect of Aquatic Environment on the Presentence of Wolbachia in Macroinvertebrates

2013 Fairfax County Regional Science and Engineering Fair

The abstract below was written by the student. The Northern Virginia
Soil and Water Conservation District made no editorial changes.

The Effect of Aquatic Environment on the Presentence of Wolbachia in
Macroinvertebrates

By: Kinsey Moser and Maria Kanevsky, Thomas Jefferson High School for
Science and Technology

Abstract

The parasitic microbe Wolbachia devastates populations of
macroinvertebrates by feminizing grown males and killing male larvae,
creating a female population which prevents future reproduction.
Wolvachia infects using vertical transmission, transmitting the infection
from female to the eggs. The result is that all larvae will become
infected, and infected males can only reproduce with infected females to
continue the progression of Wolbachia. This experiment searches for the
presence of Wolbachia from three different streams in the Northern
Virginia area. Wolbachia is a growing concern, because maroinvertebrates
are part the foundation of the aquatic ecosystem, once the foundation is
ruined, the entire ecosystem of not only the stream, but eventually the
biosphere is affected. Once collected, the macroinvertebrates were
identified, the DNA was extracted, and amplified by using PCR. The DNA
was run through gel electrophoresis to analyze and positively identify
strains of Wolbachia, which signifies the presences of Wolbachia in
Northern Virginia streams. By analyzing the results, all of the Caddisfly
larvae, with one exception, and all of the Netspinners were found to be
infected with Wolbachia, showing that these species were more susceptible
to infection. The results showed definitively that the majority of a
species was either unanimously infected or not infected, showing the
differentiation between different species of macroinvertebrates.